Burley Cross Postbox Theft. Nicola Barker

      

       BURLEY CROSS POSTBOX THEFT

       NICOLA BARKER

      FOURTH ESTATE · London

       Dedication

       For Michael Crosby-Jones, Margot Prew, Alfred the Pungent, and all in their exalted circle

       Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Internal Mail

       [letter 1]

       [letter 2]

       [letter 3]

       [letter 4]

       [letter 5]

       [letter 6]

       [letter 7]

       [letter 7a]

       [letter 8]

       [letter 9]

       [letter 10]

       [letter 11]

       [letter 12]

       [letter 13]

       [letter 14]

       [letter 15]

       [letter 16]

       [letter 17]

       [letter 18]

       [letter 19]

       [letter 20]

       [letter 21]

       [letter 22]

       [letter 23]

       [letter 24]

       [letter 25]

       [letter 26]

       Internal Mail

       Internal Mail

       By Nicola Barker

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Internal Mail

      Skipton,

      09/03/07

      14.00 hrs

       (Package and covering letter sent by internal mail)

      For attn PC Roger Topping, Ilkley

      CONFIDENTIAL

      Great news, Rog, great news –

      At last all those long, incalculably boring, soul-destroying hours of trudging and waiting and moping and cussing have finally paid off, and the career-making case you’ve been yearning for (stuck out there on your lonesome, all stiff and cross and swollen – with that haunting, blue tinge around your gills – like a huge, neglected gouty toe; a beached whale; a dour, oversized funeral director with no funeral to direct; a bad joke; a lazy error; a missed train; a dropped stitch; an unsightly stain on the perfect, white napkin of West Yorkshire’s tea-cake and charity-shop capital) is about to land – not the cake, you dope – with a lovely, resounding plop! right in the middle of your capacious lap.

      Oh, and it’s a good one, Rog, it’s a choice one! It’s something that’s going to frustrate and perplex that razor-sharp intellect of yours for many, many years to come. It’s going to haunt your dreams, Rog, and dominate your every waking moment. It’s going to confound and enrage you, Rog. It’s going to challenge you in ways you never imagined, ways you never even thought possible.

      Put plainly, Rog: it’s going to take over your miserable, pointless little existence and turn it upside down in exactly the same way it took over (and turned over) mine (which is slightly less miserable and pointless than yours, admittedly. No, considerably less, Rog – considerably less – if you don’t mind my saying so).

      It’s a Red Letter Day, Rog, so thump the tub! Whoop it up! Blow off the lid! Because your time has finally come! And it’s an important time, Rog, a vital time, a time to cast aside ‘compromise’ and ‘waffle’ and ‘pragmatism’, and re-embrace all those old-fashioned principles of your gilded youth – ideas like … like ‘truth’ and ‘honour’, like ‘pride’ and ‘justice’. (Don’t think ‘mortgage’, Rog. Never think ‘mortgage’. Great men never think ‘mortgage’. And while we’re on the subject, don’t think ‘bun’. And try not to think ‘steak pie’ or ‘battered sausage’. I know how partial you are to those.)

      In short, this is no time for beating around the bush, Rog. It’s a time for plain speaking, a time for speaking your mind, a time for speaking as you find; a time for barking out orders, for slamming doors, for shoving your way, brutishly, into tiny, tightly packed rooms, squeezing your big, meaty hand into a powerful fist and banging it down, forcefully – again and again and again and again – on to desks and tables and other hard surfaces.

      It’s